To Miss What You Never Had
by jessincka
Summary: Dougie Poynter discovers he is fatally ill. His biggest desires seem impossible to reach within his limited ammount of time, but is it so selfish to want a family of your own?
1. Prologue

To Miss What You Never Had.

**Prologue- "Devastation."**

It was a strange night. Not because of the weather or because of the things that took place within this night. Although the occurrences of this particular night were sad, devastating even, they weren't the reason one might view the night as strange. It was simply strange because, exactly thirty years previous on this same date, everything felt exactly the same. The breeze was very cold and carried with it just the smallest of snow flurries but the little bits of snow that fell did not stick; it melted away fairly quickly. As it had previously, the day seemed to have dragged on forever for most everybody who was experiencing it. Just as thirty years previous, a boy by the name of Danny was waiting anxiously for the arrival of his younger brother. His mother and stepfather were just as eagerly waiting the brother, having both commented then on the happiness that his arrival would bring and were doing so again now. What was so strange about the day was also that nobody there felt the uneasy déjà vu that should have been so obvious. What was also so odd was the fact the man who was born exactly on this day thirty years previous had gotten quite possibly the worst news he could ever have in contrast to his first day on the world; his arrival was welcomed and a very happy occasion. The news he'd just received was _not_ welcome and most definitely was not a reason to be happy.

This day was exactly like the day he was born on in so many ways, and yet so different in the most obscene ways imaginable. Today, it was Dougie Poynter's thirtieth birthday. And just today, he found out that he would not live to turn forty.

"He should be here any minute." Dougie's mother was saying, hushing the large crowd in her living room. They all turned to look at her, smiles on their faces. "He's just gotten off of work, and I've asked him to pop in before he went home. So everyone, keep your voices down!"

The happy chatter continued, but as she'd asked, they kept it to a low murmur so their guest of honor wouldn't hear them when he arrived.

Everybody was there. People he worked with, old friends from school, his distant family; but the most wonderful of all was his immediate family. Danny Jones was there, his half brother. Both of his parents and his stepfather, whom was Danny's birth father. The four of them were nearly never together all in one room. Despite the fact that the divorced couple were adamantly avoiding each other, it was quite a big thing for them to be together. Especially with Dougie's father around. His mother had remarried when Danny was a small boy of two, leaving behind Danny's father to marry Dougie's. It was a bit of a complicated thing, but for the woman's sake, the men in her life tried very hard to be at least civil to each other.

"Where is he?" Danny had marched across the room towards his mother. Dougie worked fairly nearby, and the guests had been waiting, still speaking in a low murmur, for nearly an hour.

"Should I call?" She fussed, fiddling nervously with her fingers. "He probably just forgot.." She sighed, "You know your brother. After work, he gets tired."

"I'll go check." Danny decided, grabbing his coat from a large pile by the door.

"Don't tell him anything!" She insisted. "It's a surprise!"

"Yeah, I know." He murmured, then walked out into the chill of the November air, closing the door behind him with a bit too much force.

Unbeknownst to Danny, his half-brother was currently walking up the street, bundled in layers of clothing and hunched against the cold bite of the wind. It was so cold, it was waking him out of his trance. Dougie hadn't been sure that anything could manage that.

Closing his eyes tightly, he stopped walking as the reality of the past few hours sunk in. He couldn't cry, although he felt desperate to. His insides hurt from the need to sob and release all the sadness he felt, and he wondered why he couldn't. When his eyes opened again, he saw a figure nearing him and knew right away who it was. His brother had a distinctive walk that Dougie was sure he could pick out in a crowd of people.

"Hello, Dan." He said, in a normal tone of voice as the figure marched directly passed him, seemingly annoyed.

"Dougie?" Danny turned and searched the red-cheeked face in the darkness, his eyes squinting. With his many layers, Dougie looked much thicker then he was and the hoods he wore pressed tightly to his cheeks, making his face seem a bit fat. But Danny knew him once he really looked; the eyes were obviously his brother's.

"I'm sorry I'm late for my surprise party." Dougie started, knowing right away why his half-brother was out in the cold. "I had something to do..""Something that was more important then keeping Mum happy?" Danny snapped. "What was it? A date, probably. Did you meet some pretty woman at work and skip off on this, the party our poor Mum's been planning for _months_, to go out with her?"

Dougie didn't respond. He knew his brother would react badly in a number of ways if he told him where he'd really been, so he stuffed his hands deeply in the pockets of his jeans, and continued on his way. Once he reached his mother's door, the guests inside had long since forgotten to keep their voices down and their happy chatter made his stomach churn. The fact that people could be so happy when he felt so miserable seemed very cruel. The door was wretched open, and Dougie was revealed to the people inside.

"SURPRISE!"

The loud cries rang out in a vast array of voices; his mother's naturally being the first and loudest. Dougie attempted a smile as she pulled him into the house, hugging him about the waist and fussing over her 'baby'. He felt a stab of guilt when he looked down at her. He wondered how he was ever going to get the courage to tell her what he'd just discovered. The devastation he felt could not be masked at all by the partygoers nearest him, and the moment his top most layers were laying on top of the pile of coats, people began to question him.

"What's the matter, Doug?" A man called out, and Dougie recognized him as someone he'd gone to school with; they used to catch frogs in the small creek around the back of the schoolyard during lunch. "Are you that upset about turning the big three-oh?"

Dougie faked a smile that pacified a few people enough to chuckle.

"Come on!" A woman's voice insisted; his cousin on his father's side. "Perk up! It's a party."

As he searched the faces before him for the face of his cousin, he felt a small, warm hand grasp his own. The gesture was comforting, soothing, and was apparently the trigger to bring tears to his eyes.

"Mum?" He looked down at her face and felt like crawling into her lap and crying like a child. He just wanted to be held and nurtured now, but it was far too late. He hated to ruin the party plans, to put everybody in a bad mood but it wasn't in his hands. What he needed to say had to be said eventually, and he knew if he got it over with now then they could, somehow, learn to deal with it sooner. "I need to talk to you alone."

"Just me?" She murmured, giving his hand a soft squeeze as she noticed his watering eyes. "Or your father as well?"

"Dad, too. And Danny.." He looked behind him at his brother, who was looking increasingly worried. As the two of them whispered, the guests began to talk amongst themselves, unable to hear them and without standing near to him, they couldn't see Dougie's tears. They assumed nothing was wrong, and continued to be happy as Dougie took his family into the nearest room and locked the door behind them.

The small bathroom was crowded with the four of them, all looking scared and anxious. Now that he had them ready to listen, Dougie forgot how to speak. His throat felt dry and swallowing hurt. He reached up his hand to grasp it, and his mother gasped.

"You've hurt yourself." She held his injured finger in her hands, and grimaced. "How did you do that?"

Pulling his hand away, he examined the bruised cut on his finger that had been the reason all of this had happened. Foolish as it was to blame the cut, he realized if he hadn't injured himself at work and with to the hospital for a tetanus shot, he never would have found out. He could have lived his last days blissfully unaware…but he knew, and there was no turning back. He shoved the injured hand into his jeans pocket.

"I'm sick." He muttered. "I was late today because I went to the hospital and they found out there."

Her blue eyes lifted to meet his own, and confusion and worry was evident on her face. "Sick?"

He avoided her eyes and instead looked at the wall between his father and brother. His voice was barely audible when he spoke next, but he couldn't have said more if he'd screamed the word and it's definition into their faces.

"Cancer."


	2. Chapter one

**One- "A Desperate Man Seeking An Easy Escape."**

Dr. Richard T. Patrick was probably a very good man. Perhaps he was a husband and a father, and perhaps he was good to his wife and played ball with his children. He was supposedly a good doctor, but despite all those nice, good things, Dougie hated him with a passion. The man brought all sorts of crap from the moment Dougie entered his hospital room on December 10th.

"You have what is called CLL." Dr. Patrick stated the moment he'd walked into the room. Not a greeting or a handshake, he simply sat down in front of Dougie and began saying things that made him look like the devil in Dougie's eyes.

"Or b-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia. This form of cancer is of the white blood cells. It damages the B-cells in your bone marrow and lymph nodes which fights infection. With CLL, the DNA of your B-cell is ruined so it can't fight any infections, but the infections could grow out of control and fight against your white blood cells that are healthy." He explained this without much emotion on his face, which Dougie found an amazing feat in and of itself. It seemed cancer might possibly be something serious and he wondered if anybody human could deal with this and not be mentally effected at least a little.

"When you came into the hospital to bandage your finger," He indicated the now-healed wound on Dougie's left index finger. "Your doctor needed to run a tetanus check. When we noticed your white blood cell count was abnormally high, as you know, we then tested further for leukemia and those tests came out positive." He scooted his chair closer to Dougie's bed, as if he was trying very hard to keep his concentration. Dougie wasn't looking at him, but he could hear nothing else in the world besides the man's voice. And his own pounding heartbeat.

"From what I've been able to see your cancer is at a very advanced stage. You were not diagnosed earlier with CLL because, in the early stages, it's fairly easy to live with without realizing you're ill. It's a slowly progressing cancer, that is." Dr. Patrick said. "You've lived with it for so long unknown to you, that it's progressed much more then what our treatment can help with. It is an incurable disease, but treatable for most and some people could live with the treatment after being diagnosed for…20 years, or so. Unfortunately, it seems you're at the stage in this disease where there is little we can do to stop it, especially considering you weren't getting any treatment at all.." The man was truly the devil, Dougie was positive that if he were to look up, the man's eyes would be glowing red. "All we can do is sort of…prolong the process, if you will. We can keep you alive for a while using chemotherapy, radiation, biological therapy or bone marrow transplants, but eventually…"

That was all he needed to say to be understood. Treatment would lengthen what time he had left, but basically he was a dead man. Dougie mentally patted himself on the back for not allowing his mother to join him today. She'd begged and begged, but he refused. She didn't need to hear all of this and be blubbering, that would just make it worse.

Currently, Dougie was laying in a very uncomfortable hospital bed with a needle sticking into his wrist, pumping something into his veins. He looked up at it and grimaced. Needles weren't something he was fond of.

"What is this?" He asked the doctor, motioning to the IV bag.

"This is your Oncovin," Dr. Patrick explained. "You'll be using this regularly on your hospital visits as part of your chemotherapy regimen. Every two to three weeks, you'll be back in here for your CHOP."

Dougie didn't really want to know, but he found himself asking anyway. "What is CHOP?"

"It's the form of chemotherapy we've got you on." Dr. Patrick explained. "It stands for Cyclophosphamide, Hydroxydaunorubicin, Oncovin, and Prednisone." He motioned to a tray a nurse had brought in just a while ago, "This is your Cyclophosphamide. Do you need water to take it?"

Eyeing the large pill, Dougie nodded his head. Once the water had been brought in, he forced himself to swallow and grimaced. The pill tasted terrible and even with the water it stuck to his throat in an unpleasant way.

"Once your IV bag is out, I will replace it with the Hydroxydaunorubicin, but for now you have to swallow this, as well." He handed over another pill, his Prednisone, and Dougie swallowed it dutifully.

Soon after, he was left alone with his thoughts.

It was odd for him to realize that for the short amount of time he had left, he would be spending every two to three weeks right here in this hospital, a needle in his arm and potentially woozy from all the damned drugs. It seemed an unfair way to spend his last days. Although the fact that he would die fairly soon hadn't sunk in yet. He wondered when it would and if he would cry, who would cry at his funeral and what would they say about him once he was gone? It was a depressing thought, but he was sure it was one many terminally ill people had.

How this happened, he wasn't sure. God maybe had it out for him but that only seemed fair for now. If he wasn't meant to live, then he shouldn't. That didn't stop him from wishing otherwise because he'd put so many things off. So many things he'd pushed to the side, assuming he had all the time in the world, but now…now his time was up, and what was he doing? Spending the last of his days in a hospital.

He hated it. Making a silent vow to himself, he swore the moment he was out of the hospital and in the real world again, he would make the best of it. Nothing was off limits anymore and there was nothing to stop him. Who would dare stop a dying man from doing anything?

Apparently his doctor. He returned just a few minutes afterwards, right in the middle of Dougie's quiet declaration of soon-to-come wild abandon, to change the IV bag, finishing off his first chemotherapy treatment.

Dougie went home that afternoon with a pocketful of prescription pills he needed to pick up, but after dropping his things back off at his house, he went out somewhere else instead.

Nausea was washing over him in a very harsh manner just a short hour later. He'd been told that his chemotherapy could do that to him, but he was trying his best to ignore it. He had bigger plans in mind for the night and being sick was not going to interfere with them. The pub nearest his home wasn't exactly his usual hangout, but he knew a guy who frequented the place and decided to pop in before he had to go back to work and visit him.

"I heard you're sick." Was the man's greeting. Instead of the usual cheery voice shouting, "Oi! Doug! How're you mate?" as he clapped him on the back, _this _was the greeting Dougie was getting from him now; a forlorn voice and sad eyes, like he was already mourning.

Dougie sat beside him at the bar and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not dead yet."

"I'll get you a drink." He motioned the bartender over and then patted Dougie on the shoulder. "Get my friend a whiskey, on the rocks…keep them coming, too. I'll bet he could use it."

The bartender nodded once, grabbing a short, fat glass and saying, "Sure thing, Nick."

Once Dougie had the brown liquid placed in front of him, he lifted it up and stared at it. Usually he didn't drink, but this morning felt like as good a time as any to start. He pressed the glass to his lips and downed it's contents as quickly as he could. It burnt his throat, but he liked it. When the bartender filled his glass again, he took his time drinking to talk to Nick.

"Who told you?" He asked, sipping the whiskey and setting the glass back in front of him.

Nick shrugged. "Word gets around about stuff like this. I just…heard."

That meant Danny had told him. The three of them had gone to school together; Nick was a year older then Dougie and a year younger then Danny. They hadn't been best friends, the three of them, but they'd known each other well enough to pass on gossip as they heard it. Dougie wasn't upset that his half-brother had told Nick he was sick. He was simply doing like they had in school; passing on the most recent news in the family. Nick had done the same when his sister had become pregnant at 16..

"What did he say?" Dougie asked, morbidly curious. He took another swig of the whiskey.

"Just that you were sick." Nick shrugged. "Cancer, but I didn't get any details. How are you feeling?"

"Sick to my stomach." He said honestly. "Fucking chemo."

"You're doing chemo and still working?" Nick asked.

"Yeah…I could use the money for hospital bills and, I guess as long as I can walk and read, I'll be fine working through papers and stuff. I just can't take any cases for now." He shrugged his shoulders. A lawyer's work usually involved meeting people, but if Dougie was busying himself with paperwork, like searching through people's legal documents and such, he could do that fairly easily, sick or not.

"It will help, in the long run." Nick said regarding the chemotherapy, not knowing that the words he'd meant to be comforting were having the opposite effect. "Chemo's a good thing, Doug. My Great Aunt had colon cancer, pretty far along as well, but she's right as rain after a while of-""They said it wouldn't do anything but prolong the process. Which means it's inevitable; I'm dying and pretty soon, too." Dougie said bluntly. He downed the rest of the whiskey, grimaced then stood up. "I'll be late for work."

Nick grabbed his wrist and stopped him from leaving. Dougie turned and saw his friend nervously glancing around him. Leaning in, he murmured in his ear, "Come back here tonight. We'll, uh…help you forget about this, at least for a while."

"What do you mean?" Dougie was intrigued. He'd set out to mingle with people, to do and say as he pleased and possibly get very wasted in the process later that night. The way Nick was speaking made him very interested.

"I know a guy." Nick said simply. "Just…be back in here around midnight."

It was noon then, so Dougie would need something after work to occupy his time. Nodding to Nick as a farewell, he left the bar.

At work that day, he felt very detached. Running to and fro in the office he worked in didn't seem as tedious as he'd usually found it to be. Nor was it fun. It just…was. He did what he had to do, didn't really talk to people unless he needed to, and by the time he was leaving, he felt as if the day had passed by much quicker then usual. To occupy his time until he was supposed to meet Nick and "the guy" he knew, he went to a nearby grocery store and picked up a case of Guinness. It was 7pm, since he'd taken the earlier part of the morning off for his hospital trip, his boss hadn't been too fussed about letting him take off at the usual time.

Drinking alone was a sad, pathetic thing, Dougie always said. The type of man that drank alone was the same type that went to the movies alone, had sex alone, and spoke to their cats. But apparently dying men drank alone to fill up their time until they could…well, die.

He was sulking. Who could blame him? He could blame himself, but he'd rather sulk. Death was such a hard concept to wrap your mind around, he realized. If a loved one died, it took weeks, sometimes months for you to truly realize they aren't coming back. He remembered when he was a teenager, his Grandfather had passed away; the two had been close and at his funeral, Dougie had watched the old man's coffin go into the ground and he felt like pulling him back out. It wasn't until a month after his death when Dougie had walked into his Grandmother's house expecting to smell the old man's pipe tobacco that he realized he was truly gone and not coming back.

He wondered which people would live through something like that when he was gone. And how. Would his mother try calling, as she so frequently did, just to check up? Would his father hear a funny joke and think, "Doug needs to hear that one!" only to realize he was dead? Or a friend would expect him into work only to remember he'd just attended his funeral.

"_If I don't stop now, I'll be clinically depressed, as well."_ He thought as he turned up the bottle in his hand, downing the last of his fourth Guinness. It was only 9pm and he was tired of drinking as he sulked. He tried drinking as he watched TV and drinking as he cooked a small, late dinner but nothing was stopping his pain. Both mental and physical.

His head was pounding, probably overly crowded with his brooding thoughts, every muscle in his body was protesting the fact that he hadn't been sleeping well at all since his birthday, and his stomach was cramping something horrible. And that was just the few _physical_ pains he was dealing with.

The emotional pains were on a whole other level. He couldn't even possibly fathom how much he hurt mentally; death is a difficult thing to think about. When it's your own or another's impending death, it was hard to think that one day the person would be seemingly fine, then eventually they're just…gone.

Dougie was thankful when Nick called at 10.30 that evening, and told him to come on down. "I have a friend of mine here you should meet." He said, "I'll see you in a bit."

Nick's friend was actually not a friend at all. He was little more then an acquaintance, Seth Watkins, and more accurately described as Nick's drug dealer. The moment he saw Dougie approach them, he looked to his left at Nick, one eyebrow raised in question. Nick leaned over and quickly whispered about Dougie's "situation". When Seth looked at him again, Dougie wanted to scream. He was looking at him like a person would a corpse in a funeral home.

"I'm not dead yet." He repeated his earlier words to Nick in a harsher tone that wiped the look off of Seth's face right away.

"Not tonight, you won't be." Seth motioned for the other two to follow him.

As if they were in a bad movie about teenage rebels, the three of them entered the bathroom and, after checking nobody was there with them, locked the doors. Seth began pulling things out of his pocket and arranging them, and Dougie looked on curiously.

He'd never done drugs in his life unless he needed them. Things for a headache on occasion, or whatever a doctor had prescribed. But from the way things were headed for him now, he didn't see any reason why he shouldn't try it.

Seth crushed up a pill first; it stung Dougie's nose when he snorted it, but he did it anyway. Seth swore it would make anything that felt bad feel good. After he heard that, Dougie requested another line for the hell of it.

"Just remember, mate." Seth warned as Dougie's blond head bowed over the sink, followed by a loud snorting noise. "You're paying for this shit. It doesn't come free, I'm not running a fucking charity.""I didn't ask for charity." Dougie groaned, his eyes watering from the slight sting in his nose. He pressed a thumb to his left nostril and inhaled deeply through his right. "What else do you have?"

"Weed." Seth held up a baggy and pulled a pipe from his coat pocket. "I'll hit it with you two, but you're both paying half price afterwards.""Whatever." Dougie motioned towards the pipe, "Light it up."

"It's laced." Seth warned, opening the bag and, after picking out the stems, pushing the marijuana into the pipe.

"With what?" Nick asked hesitantly at the same time that Dougie stated, "I don't care."

"Coke." Seth responded, lifting his eyes to watch the two react. "Does it matter?""I'm out." Nick said, holding his hands up. "Some shit I completely pass on, mate. I have kids."

Dougie's heart ached when he thought about Nick's family. Not because he was doing drugs, but because he just _had_ one. All Dougie had were his parents and brother. No kind wife, no pretty little daughter or boisterous son…not even a pet.

Once the pipe was lit, Dougie kept it the bulk of the time. It tasted terrible, but it made his head feel kind of foggy, like the smoke was stopping his brain from thinking anymore. Nick graciously opened a window to let the smoke out, so the bartender wouldn't catch them in there. It wasn't but a few minutes after his first toke of the pipe that Dougie felt completely unlike himself. Which was precisely what he needed just then. As Nick and Seth prepared to unlock the bathroom door, Dougie began to rummage in his wallet.

"I want some of that." He motioned to Seth's pocket. "The weed and the pills. How much?"

"I'll give you enough for three joints for 80, and 10 pills for another 15." Seth said.

For a moment, Dougie winced at the high price but then he realized money shouldn't bother him anymore. He should spend every last bit he had on whatever he wanted. Pressing the money into Seth's hand, Dougie took the pills and the bag of weed, stuffed them both into the pocket of his coat and left.

It didn't take long for those items to vanish. A week later, Dougie was sitting behind his desk at work, his leg bouncing about anxiously. A glance to the clock on the wall told him he wasn't due to get off work for another three hours. But he couldn't wait that long just to make a phone call. Especially considering he had a phone sitting in front of him…just waiting. His office phone was not to be used for personal calls, unless it was an emergency. He'd left his cell phone at home in his eagerness to get out of the house, as well. Biting his lip, he nervously stood up and closed the door to his office. It wouldn't help much, considering someone could just peer through the window on the top of the door and see him inside. But, he'd see them beforehand and be able to hang up. He sat on top of the desk and pulled the phone to him, dialed the number in a rush and waited impatiently.

"Yeah? Hello?"

"Nick, it's Doug."

"Hey, mate! How're you feeling today?"

Dougie rolled his eyes. "I'm fine, Nick. But listen, I wanted that guy's number. Seth."

"You out already?"

Nick sounded surprised. Dougie did have a copious amount of drugs last they saw each other. "Yes, I'm out. I want more."

"I'll give Seth your cell number."

"No, don't!" Dougie winced at how desperate he sounded, even to his own ears. "I'll, uh…I'm at the office. Have him say he's a client of mine when the secretary answers."

"Sure…whatever you say, Doug."

Nick just felt bad for him. That was the only reason he agreed to do it. Within thirty restless minutes, Dougie finally heard his secretary's voice come over the intercom.

"Mr. Poynter? This is Amy. I have a Mr. Seth Watkins on line one."

"I got it, thank you Amy." Dougie said hurriedly, then pressed the button and lifted the receiver to his ear. "Seth?"

"Poynter. I hear you're in need of my services already?"

"Yes. Can I meet you?"

"Why don't I pop up there? I'm on my lunch break."

"Fine." Dougie sighed in relief. "I'm on the third floor, just tell Amy your name."

After they'd hung up, Dougie dashed out into the main room and smiled at the blond secretary. "Ames, I'm expecting Mr. Watkins in for a meeting to discuss some legal matters. Would you be a dear and let him in, please?"

"Yes, sir." She smiled up at him with a fondness he'd never realized before. Amy, with short blond hair and startling blue eyes, was not very attractive in the usual sense. Her teeth were white, but a little crooked. Her lower lip was full, but her upper lip barely there. Her hair was a pretty golden yellow, but always seemed to need a brushing and she wore eye makeup that was far too glittery. What made her attractive was that she was always smiling, and in the years she'd been working as his secretary, Dougie had never heard her say an unkind word about anything at all.

He smiled back at her with equal fondness. "Thank you very much, Ames." Perhaps he would never consider her anymore then a nice friend to have, but it was enough for the time being. She had no idea of his illness and treated him like she always did. That normalcy was something he hadn't known he'd been craving.

But for now, another craving was overpowering all others. He hoped Seth would arrive soon with more pills. The wait was not very long, but Dougie had an itch that needed scratched, so for him it felt like hours. When Seth finally arrived, Dougie was staring out the window of his office.

"Mr. Poynter, Mr. Watkins is here."

Amy's voice over the intercom shocked him back to reality, and he quickly pressed the button to talk back to her and said, "Thank you, Amy. Send him in."

He turned and watched as the door opened and Seth came in, laughing. "Quite a looker you've got working under you, Doug." He shook his head, the door still open. "I hope you haven't actually asked her to work _under_ you?"

Dougie rushed forward and slammed the office door shut, catching a glimpse of poor, sweet Amy's tear-stained face. "Shut your face, Seth." Dougie insisted. "She's a sweet girl.""Don't be rude to me." Seth held up a bag and smiled. "I brought you presents."

"Presents I have to pay for." Dougie grumbled, pulling out his wallet.

"True, but I didn't just bring you the pills and the weed." Seth said cryptically. "I brought you something else. Stronger."

That caught Dougie's attention.

Later that night, Dougie emptied out the contents of his pockets hurriedly. He turned on his television, tossed the remote on the couch and searched through the items he'd dumped on the coffee table. The first thing he did was push the marijuana into the little pipe he'd recently bought himself and light it. As he smoked, he eyed the needle in front of him curiously. It was in a little packet, so surely it wasn't contaminated with anything. It was the little vile of stuff that Seth had given him that worried him. Heroin. He'd told him how to prepare it, so Dougie set about doing that. He felt, once again, like he was in a bad movie about drug abuse as he heated the substance in a spoon, his arm with a belt tightened around it. He pressed the tip of the needle into the protruding vein and grimaced at the sting. With the heroin in his veins, he crushed up two pills and snorted until every bit of the powder was gone.

After a few minutes, within which he smoked a bit more from his small pipe, he repeated the process. His mind was speeding at a million miles per hour, thinking thoughts that he couldn't even decipher. He began to cry, crumpling to the floor in front of the couch, the needle sticking from his left arm.

Faces began to appear before his eyes; he saw his mother and his father, Danny and his family…then his stomach began to churn and he stood up quickly. He vomited onto the couch, then with a violent shudder, fell face-first into the pile of sick.


End file.
